As a professional weaver, I'm in a constant state of changing what's on the loom: planning a project, dyeing yarn for the project, warping the loom with that new yarn, weaving, finishing, and so on. Blogging is a way for me to share the process, and a way for me to keep track of what I did when.

Translate

Pages

Friday, October 24, 2008

Painted Warp Drying

It's been a while (months? years!) since I've done a painted warp. This time I followed a recipe quoted by a member of the Dyers List for a pre-soak of a citric acid solution (4 tsp citric per quart of water), in which the chained warp soaked for maybe 15 minutes before I began painting with Lanaset/Sabraset at about a 1% solution (each of the main stock colors was mixed with 3 gm of dye powder to 300 ml water). No acid in the dye-stock, only in the pre-soak. After painting, the warp was steamed for an hour and a half, and then it was dinner time so I just turned off the heat and left the steamer wrapped in towels overnight.

This afternoon I was able to find time to remove the plastic wrap, re-chain the warp, and rinse it. To my surprise, there was absolutely no color rinse-out. The water was clear. I've always been able to get Lanaset to exhaust completely in an immersion dyebath, but this was the first time there was no color rinsing out of a painted warp. Wow! I'm gonna use that pre-soak recipe again!

Here is the warp, unchained so it'll dry faster (it's below 20% humidity outside at 5pm, so it won't take long), but even damp it looks pretty good.

That purple near the bottom of the picture is deceptive - it's really closer to royal. The color transitions are as smooth as I'd hoped - no sudden, sharp changes, just slow movement to the next color. Tomorrow when it's dry, I'll try to get a picture of the painted warp next to the solid warp yarn. Hopefully the value range is pretty close.

Whoops! Tomorrow and Sunday are Open Studios again, so if I have a moment to snap pictures, it'll have to be after the studio hours. Oh, well...

2 comments:

joanna
said...

Sandra, is your use of the term "painted warp" different from what I might call "space-dyed warp"? What did you actually do when you "painted" the warp while it was chained?joannanaaldkunst@koningsoord.org

About Me

I am a professional weaver, specializing in complex weaves using fine threads. Most of my studio work consists of scarves, shawls, and wraps woven on a 48-inch, 24-shaft computer-assisted AVL dobby loom or wall art woven on a 48-inch, 1,440-heddle AVL jacquard loom. I exhibit and sell my work through high-end retail craft shows such as the Smithsonian Craft Show, the American Craft Council San Francisco show, and several smaller regional and local fine craft shows.